Chemism is a category of objectivity which, as a rule, is not
particularly emphasised, and is generally put under the head of
mechanism. The common name of mechanical relationship is applied to
both, in contra-distinction to the teleological. There is a reason for
this in the common feature which belongs to mechanism and chemism. In
them the notion exists, but only implicit and latent, and they are thus
both marked off from teleology where the notion has real independent
existence. This is true: and yet chemism and mechanism are very
decidedly distinct. The object, in the form of mechanism, is primarily
only an indifferent reference to self, while the chemical object is
seen to be completely in reference to something else. No doubt even
in mechanism, as it develops itself, there spring up references to
something else: but the nexus of mechanical objects with one another is
at first only an external nexus, so that the objects in connexion with
one another still retain the semblance of independence. In nature, for
example; the several celestial bodies, which form our solar system,
compose a kinetic system, and thereby show that they are related to
one another. Motion, however, as the unity of time and space, is a
connexion which is purely abstract and external. And it seems therefore
as if these celestial bodies, which are thus externally connected with
each other, would continue to be what they are, even apart from this
reciprocal relation. The case is quite different with chemism. Objects
chemically biassed are what they are expressly by that bias alone.
Hence they are the absolute impulse towards integration by and in one
another.
201.] The product of the chemical process consequently is the Neutral
object, latent in the two extremes, each on the alert. The notion
or concrete universal, by means of the bias of the objects (the
particularity), coalesces with the individuality (in the shape of the
product), and in that only with itself. In this process too the other
syllogisms are equally involved. The place of mean is taken both by
individuality as activity, and by the concrete universal, the essence
of the strained extremes; which essence reaches definite being in the
product.
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